剝 → 頤
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 27: Nourishment
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 1).
Line 1
初六 剝牀以足。蔑貞凶。
Six at the beginning means: The leg of the bed is split. Those who persevere are destroyed. Misfortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
危坐至暮，請求不得。膏澤不降，政戾民忒。
Empty bowls overturned on the table; the stove is cold, ashes chill. A mother calls her children home — there is nothing to serve.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth erodes into mountain above thunder — Nourishment, the hexagram of what sustains and what starves. The original verse speaks of a minister who sits rigidly until dusk, his petitions denied. Grace and favor do not descend; governance turns cruel and the people suffer. The image of denied nourishment is central: one waits in the proper posture of supplication, but nothing comes. The rewritten verse makes this concrete — empty bowls overturned, a cold stove with dead ashes, a mother calling her child home with nothing to serve. From Splitting Apart to Nourishment, the mountain's decay should yield to the mouth's sustaining function, yet here the mouth is empty. Thunder trapped beneath the mountain cannot break through; nourishment exists in principle but is withheld in practice.
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